The Pandervils (20 page)

Carrie kept her good news until the surprising, the exciting, the utterly unlooked-for visit of Mr Sparks, the aged solicitor of Farringay, who finally introduced himself to Mrs Noom three minutes before closing-time. This was clearly a parlour occasion; so in the cold parlour instead of in the warm kitchen Mr Sparks was received. He seemed —said Carrie afterwards, to Egg—impatient to begin his business, as though, at his time of life, he had no time to spare in merely sociable exchanges. As Carrie was leaving the room he glanced at her over the rim of his spectacles and said, with a touch of asperity: ‘I shall want you,
young lady. Miss Noom, I believe? Caroline Noom?'

‘That's me,' said Carrie.

The lawyer coughed. ‘What I have to say concerns you, as well as your mother.'

‘Indeed!' exclaimed Mrs Noom. (‘You should have seen the look she give him!' said Carrie.)

‘I'll fetch Mr Pandervil then,' remarked Carrie. ‘For what concerns me,' she added proudly (if her own account is to be trusted), ‘concerns Mr Pandervil too.'

When all three were seated in a row before him, Mr Sparks cleared his throat and remarked coldly, with a slight bow to Mrs Noom: ‘The late Mr Richard Noom, a few weeks before his lamented decease, made a will. Of that will I hold a copy in my hand. First of all, Mrs Noom, and, ah, Miss Noom, I must apologize for the fact that these necessary details reach you several days later than they, ah, should have reached you. The fact is, ah, I have been ill in bed, and my subordinates, feeling this to be a matter of some delicacy, did not care to handle it in my, ah, absence. I do not agree with them.' Mr Spark smiled grimly. ‘I have, indeed, forcibly expressed myself in a contrary sense.'

There was a pause. Mr Sparks rustled his papers. Mrs Noom spoke.

‘Mr Noom made his will years ago. On his wedding day it was. If you tell me he's been and done something behind my back, well I don't believe it, Mr Sparks, lawyer or no lawyer, for a
person has their rights,' said Mrs Noom. ‘And their feelings too,' she added, with an ominous sniff.

‘Allow me to point out—' began the lawyer.

‘Never a cross word in thirty years,' said Mrs Noom.

‘Proceeding to the terms of the will,' resumed Mr Sparks, without apparent emotion, ‘I shall, if you will permit me, briefly summarize them. The testator gives and bequeaths the whole of his property of whatsoever description to his dearly beloved and only daughter Caroline for her sole use and benefit,
except
', said Mr Sparks, with a certain sonorous unction, ‘except as hereinafter provided. Which is to say, that the said Caroline is straitly charged to succour support and maintain with all due care and in a reasonable state of comfort, well-being and security, Georgina Noom, née Huggins, the dearly beloved wife of the testator … That seemed to me,' said Mr Sparks, with a sudden access of cheerfulness, ‘to need and require a certain measure of definition. I ventured to advise, therefore, a rather more specific provision, to which, I am happy to say, the testator was persuaded to give legal effect. Here it is.' He stopped to wipe his spectacles on a silk handkerchief. ‘Here it is. In the event of the said Georgina Noom electing to share the house and home of the said Caroline Noom the said Georgina Noom is to receive the sum of ten pounds per annum. But in the event of her not so electing the said Georgina Noom is to receive, ah, a somewhat
larger sum, to be paid to her by the hands of the testator's solicitors, Messrs Henry Sparks & Company. The sum, in short, of fifty-two pounds per annum. This means, madam, that you have a first charge on the profits of the business, of which your daughter is now the proprietress.'

‘Thank you for nothing,' said Mrs Noom.

‘Further, it is my duty, I think, to point out to you that it might, in certain circumstances, be to your advantage to leave your daughter's roof. On the other hand …'

‘Rest easy, Mr Sparks!' Mrs Noom's voice was gall itself. ‘I shall stay.' She closed her mouth with a snap. ‘And what,' cried Mrs Noom, turning savagely on her daughter, ‘what's between you and this young smarty here, Miss Creepy Crawly? Sneaking round your poor Pa and poisoning his innocent mind against his own wife!'

‘If you're referring to Mr Pandervil, Ma,' said Carrie, with a toss of the head, ‘well, I'm going to marry Mr Pandervil, that's all about it … Yes, Ma, I mean it. I'm going to marry Egg and take care of him, and he's going to look after the business for us, and we shall all be as comfy as you please. Shan't we, Egg?'

Egg saw with dismay that Carrie was five years older than the girl he had kissed yesterday, and that the commanding gesture with which she challenged the future might almost have been her mother's.

At eleven o'clock on a Monday morning, some seven years after the death of Mr Noom, there was great excitement in Farringay; but, for all that we know to the contrary, it was almost entirely confined within one breast: that of Mr Farthing, who stood, hands in pockets, pensively jingling his keys and coppers, in the doorway of Noom's Stores. Mr Farthing, whose features now peeped through a forest of black beard, had come to make a small purchase and to pass the time of day with his neighbour Mr Pandervil, but at the moment he was doing neither of these things: with his back to the shop, shutting out the morning sunlight, he stared in a kind of melancholy fever at the work of demolition going on across the street, where workmen, with complete disregard of Mr Farthing's feelings, were destroying that fifty yards of ancient red-brick wall which had given the High Street its peculiar distinction, its character, its onesidedness. The housebreakers worked without haste and without pity, like time itself; they had a long job before them, for there was old Mrs Bartlett's tumbledown cottage as well as this wall to be removed. A stubborn old lady
with a strange whim for dying in the house she had been born in, Mrs Bartlett had for many years opposed modern progress by the simple expedient of not hearing anything that was said to her and by being unable to read or write. But she had at last vacated her cottage—just the place, said Mr Catch, for a nice butcher's shop—and moved into an even humbler lodging in the churchyard; and Squire Oaks—as this more formidable obstacle was still called by the older inhabitants of Farringay—had got himself into financial difficulties from which only the sale of half of his estate could extricate him. The peasant's death and the Squire's fall had been Farringay's great opportunity; and Farringay, in the person of Blogg and Brother, had been quick to see and to seize it. Mr Blogg, as everybody allowed, did a smart deal; he first bought the land from Mr Oaks and the cottage from Mrs Bartlett's heirs, and then, having worked up a tremendous agitation for the broadening of the High Street, generously sold part of what he had bought to the District Council, of which, by a touching coincidence, he happened to be chairman. The land of which Farringay became thus possessed was called ‘accommodation land', a phrase that explained, to everybody's satisfaction, why Mr Blogg had been compelled to charge for half his purchase ten times as much as the whole of it had cost him six months before. And now Farringay was to have a splendid High Street, and everybody was rubbing his hands with pleasure in the
prospect, except, among Egg Pandervil's acquaintances, Mr Farthing. For Mr Farthing was a sentimentalist. Useless to talk to him of Farringay's future glory; he was mourning the destruction of her past. Worse than useless to urge upon him that the High Street would be improved out of all knowledge, for that was precisely the kind of improvement which Mr Farthing most bitterly disliked and feared.

And so he stood brooding in the doorway of Egg's shop. ‘I don't like the look of that, Mr Pandervil,' he said presently, half turning. ‘Not a bit I don't.' Receiving no answer he said: ‘What's your way of thinking?'

Egg, from behind his counter, nodded indifferently. ‘Seems a pity, p'raps. But if they
will
'ave it, let 'em! It won't keep
me
awake of nights.'

‘It'll be omnibuses next week,' said Mr Farthing bitterly.

‘Omnibuses?' exclaimed Mr Pandervil. ‘Omnibuses next week! First I've heard of it.'

‘Next week or next twelvemonth, it's all one,' said Mr Farthing. ‘They'll come, mark my words.
And
soon, what's more.'

With his back to Egg he stood for another five minutes in complete silence. Then he remarked suddenly: ‘Well, I mustn't stand here chatting all day!' And he set off down the street.

In ten seconds he was back again. ‘Nearly forgot. The missus wants a bit of bundle-wood, Mr Pandervil, if you'll be so obliging.'

‘Pleasure, Mr Farthing.'

Mr Pandervil tendered the bundle-wood, and Mr Farthing received and paid for it with a formal courtesy of which each was both conscious and proud. It is in this style, they were both thinking, that buying and selling across the counter should be conducted; subtly, without a word said, they affirmed the dignity of retail trade. And Mr Pandervil, enjoying the piquancy of the moment, shewed a nice discrimination in not saying, as it was on the tip of his tongue to say: ‘May I send it for you?' For that would have been overdoing it. An artist knows when to stop.

The transaction over, they were old friends again. ‘Well, I'll be bowling my hoop,' said Mr Farthing.

He meant, and was understood to mean, that he was going. With this preliminary the two friends settled down to a little quiet conversation.

‘How's the olive-branches, Mr Pandervil? Sprouting and shooting and puttething forth leaves in their season, hey?'

‘Mustn't complain,' said Egg. ‘Mabe come over queer yesterday, but she's all right again ‘smorning. It's my belief she eats too much for a child of her age. Why, when
I
was five …' The gleam of false reminiscence visited his eyes, to be extinguished next instant by the cloud of a genuine and recent memory. ‘Young Bobbie 'ad quite a bit to say for 'imself last night. Up half the night I was, with bottles and dill-water and I don't know what all.'

Mr Farthing nodded. ‘I know. I bin through
it, Mr Pandervil. And shall again, I shouldn't wonder. Well'—he moved reluctantly, a few steps nearer the door—‘this won't mend the parson's boots, will it!' He nodded farewell, and stood irresolute.

‘It's a dry day, to be sure,' said Mr Farthing presently. ‘And I should hate a glass of beer,' he added wistfully.

‘Jest a minute, Mr Farthing!' said Egg.

Mr Farthing came back to the counter. ‘What! Did I leave me bit of bundle-wood after all!'

‘So you did,' Egg laughed nervously. ‘I hadn't noticed. Fancy that! There was something I wanted to ask you, Mr Farthing. A sort of a bet it is that I've got on with someone. Now if you saw the word
honourable
front of someone's name, same as it might be “the Honourable John Smith”, frinstance. Now what would you say that meant?'

Mr Farthing looked thoughtful. ‘Members of Parliament,' he suggested. ‘Aren't they honourables?'

‘Ah, p'raps you're right!' exclaimed Egg, affecting enlightenment. ‘It's of no importance, you know. Just a bit of an argument I had; that's all. One said one thing and one said another. So we sort of bet on it.'

‘Jusso,' agreed Mr Farthing. ‘Well …' He nodded again, and this time the departure was achieved.

Left to himself Mr Pandervil stood for some while resting his hands on the counter and staring at that oblong of blazing brightness, the doorway.
In his shirt-sleeves, and aproned, he looked precisely what he was—a grocer in a small but comfortable way of business. From his appearance and demeanour it could not have been guessed that his father had written a book so learned and so dull that no one had ever been persuaded to publish it, and that he himself in his time had ploughed and sown and reaped a hundred acres and assisted countless labouring sheep to deliver their lambs one stage nearer the slaughter-house; nor could it have been guessed that he was not the king of this particular castle, Noom's Stores, but only the consort of its queen. To all appearance he was an ordinary enough grocer. But his behaviour during the next five minutes was anything but ordinary. First of all, awaking from his dream, he glided quickly to the glass-panelled door of the parlour and peeped in. Satisfied with what he saw, or did not see, he walked across the shop and closed the street door, so shutting out the radiant summer. Finally, he removed the lid from a biscuit tin, and, standing with his back to the window, held this improvised mirror in front of his face and stared with intense and mournful curiosity at the vague reflection it gave back to him. He saw, dimly but indubitably, the lines of resignation that pencilled his forehead, and the russet muttonchop whiskers that altered so oddly the character of his face; and by a queer trick of memory he suddenly recalled that moment—the night Sarah betrothed herself to Mr Twigg, was it twelve years ago, or more?— when he had scrutinized himself in the bedroom
mirror at home, with Algernon watching him perplexedly from the bed.

The shop-bell tinkled. ‘Morning, Mr Pandervil!'

He was caught, the lid of the biscuit-tin still in his hand, still raised at a significant angle. ‘How d'ye do, Mr Wimmett! All the neighbours coming to see me this morning! Had Mr Farthing here only a minute ago.'

Mr Wimmett eyed his friend in surprise. ‘Whad you doing with that thing, Mr Pandervil? Cut yourself with it or suthing?'

‘No, not exactly cut myself,' said Egg. ‘Do you know, these bits of tin they haven't half got a shine on 'em. Never noticed it before. See, Mr Wimmett—dash me, you can see your face in 'em … And what can I do for you this morning?'

Mr Wimmett's manner became curiously hesitating and confidential. His willowy figure stooped towards Egg. ‘See here, Mr Pandervil. It's about that letter of yours.'